April 22, 2007
Inventory
This car appears to have lived most of its life in New Mexico. When I purchased it in late 1992 it wore a license plate frame that boasted a hometown of Carlsbad, New Mexico.
I bought the car from a gentleman in Lansing, Michigan. He told me the car had belonged to a doctor and his wife from New Mexico who drove it to Canada each summer, and that it the timing chain had jumped while the car was passing through Lansing. The seller told me that it had been repaired by the shop in which he worked. The owners had simply sold the car rather than wait for repairs. That's the story, but the only documentation I have of it is that license plate frame. That, and a car that obviously hadn't spent much time in Michigan.
I took the boat out of storage yesterday. I had taken it to my mother's for the winter to give myself extra room in my pole barn while we worked on getting ready to move. We haven't finished the move yet, but I have decided to bring the Ninety Eight home. I have decided to start work on restoring the car after owning it for fifteen years. One of my dreams is to use this car as a tow vehicle for a circa 1963 Airstream Overlander, or maybe my 1971 Sea Ray SRV 180.
To be fair, in fifteen years, I have accomplished some work on the car. When I got the car the rear seat was wrapped in the plastic that was popular in the 60's to protect upholstery. The New Mexico sun had melted the plastic cover into the top of the rear seatback. I removed the plastic from the seat, purchased replacement vinyl from SMS Auto Fabrics in Oregon, and had a local upholstery shop replace the damaged section. The headliner was crumbling and I had that replaced as well, along with the carpet. Other miscellaneous repairs have been done over the years. I picked up a set of the factory deluxe wheel covers at the Olds Nationals when they were in Lansing in 1997, the year of Oldsmobile's 100th anniversary.
After restoring two Corvairs, I am ready for a change of pace and want to focus my energies on the Olds. Right now I am mostly doing planning. Step one in my project is to inventory the present condition of the vehicle. Yesterday I washed the car and took almost 200 photos to assist in assessing the condition of the vehicle and to determine what the project will -- and won't -- include.
This page is pretty lengthy, so I have broken it into sections:
This 1963 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight Holiday Sports Sedan was built in Kansas City, Kansas. As previously mentioned, the car is painted Pacific Mist, paint code P, with a Platinum interior, which is code 371. The odometer, which I believe to be relatively accurate, shows approximately 101,000 miles. It was originally equipped with at least the following options and standard equipment:
A01 Soft-Ray Tinted Glass
A31 Electric Window Lifts (std. equip.)
A37 Seat Belts - Front
A41 Electric 4-Way Seat Adjuster
A91 Deck Lid Power Lock Release
B93 Door-Edge Guards
C60 Air Conditioning
D31 Glareproof Tilt-Type Mirror
D32 Outside Rear View Mirror
K82 Special-Duty Delcotron - 52 Amp
N33 Tilt-Away Steering Wheel
P01 Wheel Discs
T86 Back-Up Lamps
U15 Safety Sentinel
U29 Courtesy and Map Lamps (std. equip.)
U35 Electric Clock (std. equip.)
U40 Parking Brake Signal Lamp (std. equip.)
U65 Super De Luxe Radio (Signal Seeker Tuning)
U75 Electric Antenna
V01 Special-Duty Engine Cooling
As ordered, this car was highly optioned. The car may have a heavy-duty frame (option code Y71) but I have not verified this yet. Interestingly, it appears to have all of the options in Accessory Group 1, the only group offered for Ninety Eights, except for Y60, Accessory Package Group, which consisted of a visor vanity mirror and trunk and engine compartment lamps.
I have already upgraded the wheel covers, adding the P02 De Luxe Wheel Discs with Provincial White paint. As part of this project I intend to add the following options to the car:
A32 Electric Ventipanes (some parts on order)
A42 Electric 6-Way Seat Adjuster (parts on order)
K30 Cruise Control (some parts on hand)
Options that I may also add include the following:
U80 Bi-Phonic Speaker System
U84 Bi-Phonic Speaker with Reverberator
Y60 Accessory Package Group
Y70 98 Accent Stripe
There is a decent chance that I will lose the door edge guards as part of the process, as I generally don't care for them that much. My goal is not to have a car with every possible option, but to have every option I would have had if I could have ordered the car back in 1963 (or 1962, when I believe it was built). Of course, since I was also built in 1962, I wouldn't have been ordering much of anything back then, so I will have to work a little harder to order those options now.
This car is painted in Pacific Mist acrylic lacquer, which was paint code P for Olds in 1963. It is probably a thirty-footer. Here are some of the more flattering exterior shots.
Except for a section on the drivers side from about the middle of the back door up to about eight inches into the fender, the paint appears to be completely original. However, its is badly weathered, and there are numerous small nicks and dings, and the paint is worn through in many places. The only significant body damage is on the right rear door, where there is a slight crease.
This next picture shows some of the fading on the top of the car.
These pictures make the car look pretty good, but in person, it's evident that the car needs a complete repaint.
There is very minimal rust damage to the car. There is some rust hidden under the rocker trim on the right quarter panel, probably a result of being too close to the exhaust. Another rust out occurred in the rear bumper as a result of a bracket getting clogged with dirt.
With the exception of the bumper, the trim is excellent on the car. The die cast rocker panel trim is very presentable. The only damage to any of the stainless is a dent in the right rear wheel well opening molding that appears to have occurred at the same time that the right rear door was damaged. There is some staining on the anodized panel below the grille. Otherwise I am fortunate to have a lot of very nice brightwork.
The interior of this car is really quite nice. As I mentioned earlier, I had to have a section of the rear seat repaired, but the bonus was that the rest of the fabric is gorgeous. This picture also shows the replacement headliner that I had installed.
The door panels are very nice but nevertheless will probably get replaced.
This picture of the front passenger door shows the holes left by a door pull which a previous owner installed for some unknown reason. Except for the holes, it is representative of the condition of all of the door panels. There are three reasons why I think I will end up replacing these otherwise very nice door panels. The first reason is this set of holes. I contacted SMS Auto Fabrics and they are able to reproduce the door panel, but they will only do a complete set. The second reason to replace the door panels is that I want to add power ventipanes, which means that the window cranks in the front doors will be eliminated. The last reason that I think I will have these panels restored with new vinyl is that there is slight discoloration of the vinyl at the very top edge of each door. By itself it wouldn't be enough to convince me to spend the money on restoration, but coupled with the rest of the circumstances, I think it makes sense to have them done.
The door trim is very nice.
These front door switch consoles unfortunately are going to be replaced as part of the ventipane/6-way seat upgrade. Here's one of the back seat consoles:
The dash is in generally very nice condition as well, with an unblemished dash pad.
The worst wear on the dash is around the ignition switch:
The front seat shows some minor wear on the driver's side and needs cleaning. I think I will have the fabric on the bottom of the driver's seat replaced, since I can get the fabric from SMS.
The carpet fits poorly and looks bad (it's not original) and will be replaced.
The engine and transmission operate pretty much fine--I just drove the car 100 miles with no problems. Cosmetically, the engine compartment isn't too pretty:
I want to have a nice looking engine compartment and I am thinking that at a minimum the front clip will have to come off when the car gets repainted. Both fenders show some rust where the core support bolts up:
I am thinking that lots of disassembly and powdercoating are in order here.
No pictures for this section. Everything under the car is pretty much original. I did some looking under it this weekend and noticed that the frame rails are all boxed, so I think this means I have the heavy duty chassis, which is a big plus. Other than the normal surface rust, everything is quite solid down there.
The inside of the decklid is pretty nice, though the seam needs some attention at the back. It's not swollen or anything, but it should be cleaned up.
The original cardboard in the trunk is pretty nice. The original fabric is all present, but should probably be replaced.
All of the jack components are present and accounted for. The biggest issue in the trunk is that there is some rust at the rear of the compartment at the seam below the latch. This will have to be addressed.
Mechanical and Accessories
This car is in generally good mechanical condition, but it leaks a lot. The engine leaks from pretty much everywhere but the rear main, and the transmission leaks, too. I recently had the radiator re-cored and replaced the fan clutch. The alternator, a/c compressor, fuel pump, water pump and thermostat have been replaced since I bought the car. (I have the original a/c compressor and would like to have it rebuilt and put it back into service.) The a/c is currently not working, but worked recently; I have a leak somewhere. The power windows all work well (I've replaced a couple of motors). After tearing down, cleaning and re-lubing the transmission for the power seat, the seat works fine. The trunk release works, the power antenna works (I replaced the mast at one point), and the clock works with a quartz movement I installed. The Safety Sentinel does not work, even though I once tore the speedo down trying to figure out why. The windshield washers don't work but I don't see this as an insurmountable problem. The Wonderbar radio works, but the Wonderbar doesn't operate properly and the radio has a tendency to get loud, then quiet, then loud, so it needs attention.
March 20, 2012 Update
Wow, five years. This page was originally posted in 2007 and I haven't done much with the car since then but routine maintenance and a lot of pleasure driving. However, I am getting closer to getting this project really rolling and I think it will get completed in the next year. My oldest son would prefer that the restoration not take place because he likes the car's original patina. I told him that in my opinion, patina would be nice on a early '60's Country Squire, but it looks wrong on a Ninety-Eight. I explained it this way: you want your jeans faded, but your suit pressed. He doesn't have to agree with me; it's my car.
I have all the parts for the factory cruise setup, and even had the control head reworked so it won't be broken like everyone else's is. I now have all the parts for adding power ventipanes and a six-way power seat. I recently installed a factory trunk light (woohoo!). I found a working Wonderbar radio that doesn't change volume, but now the signal seeking feature is out (probably a bad tube). And in the incredibly trivial department, I have been working on a car show sign, which is coming along well. You can see it here.